'
It seemed like a dream to Waverley that these deeds of violence should be
familiar to men's minds, and currently talked of as falling within the
common order of things, and happening daily in the immediate vicinity,
without his having crossed the seas, and while he was yet in the
otherwise well-ordered island of Great Britain.
CHAPTER XVI
AN UNEXPECTED ALLY APPEARS
The Baron returned at the dinner-hour, and had in a great measure
recovered his composure and good-humour. He not only confirmed the
stories which Edward had heard from Rose and Bailie Macwheeble, but added
many anecdotes from his own experience, concerning the state of the
Highlands and their inhabitants. The chiefs he pronounced to be, in
general, gentlemen of great honour and high pedigree, whose word was
accounted as a law by all those of their own sept, or clan. 'It did not
indeed,' he said, 'become them, as had occurred in late instances, to
propone their prosapia, a lineage which rested for the most part on the
vain and fond rhymes of their seannachies or bhairds, as aequiponderate
with the evidence of ancient charters and royal grants of antiquity,
conferred upon distinguished houses in the Low Country by divers Scottish
monarchs; nevertheless, such was their outrecuidance and presumption, as
to undervalue those who possessed such evidents, as if they held their
lands in a sheep's skin.
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